EX LIBRIS

After ten days of film-going, the Toronto International Film Festival came to a close last night after the Grolsch People’s Choice Documentary Award was bestowed upon Agnès Varda and JR for their L’Œil d’or winning collaboration FACES, PLACES at the awards ceremony at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The week prior, the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to honor Varda with an Oscar at the annual honorary Governors Awards to take place in November, reported Anne Thompson at IndieWire.

Unsurprisingly, there have been reams of coverage coming out of Toronto, from round-ups such as Thompson‘s documentary breakouts or The Hollywood Reporter‘s Best of the Fall Festivals, which names Greg Barker’s “fascinating, frequently moving” THE FINAL YEAR and Brett Morgan’s “wondrous, moving account of” trailblazing wildlife conservationist Jane Goodall among its rank, as well as copious doc reviews logged (too many to individually list here) by the hardworking folks over at Cinema Scope, MUBI’s Notebook, IndieWire, Nonfics & POV Magazine. In IDA’s The Feedback, Tom White spoke with director Erika Cohn about her TIFF debuted feature THE JUDGE, which had a rough cut preview earlier this year as part of IDA’s DocuClub. Jeremy Elphick talked to Ben Russell about his new mining doc GOOD LUCK, “his lengthy relationship with Suriname, and the experience of shooting for the first time in Serbia,” at 4:3. Additionally, Nicolas Rapold interviewed Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, the directors behind the much discussed CANIBA, “about the film’s aesthetics and ethics beachside at the Venice film festival, where CANIBAhad its world premiere before screening at TIFF and in Projections at the New York Film Festival.” Let’s not forget that the team at Realscreen covered TIFF’s Doc Conference, with Jessica Mach on gender barriers in the doc industry, Daniele Alcinii on lessons in privately financing your documentary, and Selina Chignall on building a career in documentary. More will surely surface in the week to come.